


Jam

by Euny_Sloane



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel Wings, Angelic Aziraphale, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eldritch eyes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Poetry, Jam, Love, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 02:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20575319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euny_Sloane/pseuds/Euny_Sloane
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley finally get to be honest with their feelings after the apocalypse didn't happen, and if you've ever tried to do that, you know how it feels.  There's a bit of panic, a lot of empathy, some poetry, and a few eldritch eyes.





	Jam

Apricot, fig, blackcurrant, pomegranate super fruit…  
...pomegranate super fruit? what on earth. _Pomegranate juice, morello cherries, and acai… oh lords of hell why can’t they just let the people of the Amazon have their own foods without turning it into posh jams?_  
...raspberry, apple butter, speculoos butter, peanut butter...  
No no no.  
He needed jam. Fruit jam, butter, bread, tea. Coffee, he had. Maybe eggs? He couldn’t make them how Aziraphale liked them, gently poached and draped in hollandaise, but he could manage a fried egg in a pinch.  
Aziraphale had left his apartment that morning in a rush to grab some tea and check on things at his shop, after making a moue at the state of Crowley’s pantry. Badly needing the walk to clear his head, Crowley slouched out to the gourmet grocery a long walk from his apartment.  
A tinny instrumental version of Chelsea Morning played over the store’s speakers and Crowley groaned in recollection.

_Oh, won't you stay_   
_ We'll put on the day_   
_ And we'll wear it 'till the night comes_

Crowley reached for a pink grapefruit marmalade, and if it was the same color as a blush on prim cheekbones flushed by wine the night before, he determinedly avoided thinking about it.

****************************  
They had fallen asleep on the couch - passed out more like, too much Bordeaux to blame, leaned in to one another like fence posts forgotten on boggy ground, no bars in between to hold them up, hold them apart, hold the line.

In the liminal warmth that precedes waking, Crowley dimly recalled a dream: something about a sense of movement - a lifting and floating feeling, like being on a boat, then coolness and flatness followed by warmth under and around him. Had to be a dream - he wasn’t on a boat now, but in bed: warm, soft and yielding. _Bed?_ He must have been pretty pissed to not even remember going to bed.

Slithering towards consciousness, Crowley had noticed something strange about the usually smooth, empty expanse of his bed. He expected silk pajamas barely catching on silk sheets as he sleepily stretched his ankles, calves tensing and relaxing. Only, where were his pajamas? He didn’t usually go to bed in only his underwear. And how was his body pillow so warm? Until the body pillow shifted and said “Oh, good, dearest. You’re awake. ”

In the ensuing ruckus, all the sheets and half the pillows ended up on the floor or wrapped around Crowley, while Aziraphale blinked, all startled owl and unbuttoned waistcoat, nested in a remaining blanket.

“You’re not a pillow.”  
  
“Ah, no. Not anymore, anyway,” was Aziraphale’s somewhat salty reply.  
  
“We’re not on the couch.”  
  
“No-oo. No, we are not. Oh dear, your feathers are all ruffled.”  
  
Crowley looked behind his shoulders. No wings out. What feathers? His feet were suddenly too cold. “...feathers?”  
  
“I’m being metaphorical. Really, you don’t wake up quickly, do you?”  
  
“Erm.”  
  
“How about we make some tea and toast and have a chat?”  
  
“Wait," Crowley said, holding up one hand in plea.  
  
“...for tea?” came Aziraphale's bewildered reply.  
  
Crowley considered his feet briefly, before stepping onto a pile of sheets and pillows that had tumbled from his bed and sank bonelessly into them in a cross legged position. The blurry feeling was fading with conversation and he asked the only thing that made sense “How did we get here?”  
  
“Here?” Aziraphale seemed totally bewildered.  
  
Crowley nodded.  
  
“Here in Mayfair? We took the - ”  
  
Crowley’s head started to shake up, then to the side, and paused, said “...no, in bed,” and felt some dam give way in his middle, hot worry leaking into his gut, having just asked his angel -no no not his not his, he had to remember that- how they had ended up in bed together.  
  
“Oh, you really didn’t wake, did you? I didn’t want you to get a crick in your neck when you fell asleep on my shoulder, so I carried you to bed. And I didn’t know where your pajamas were.” Crowley’s hot drip of worry turned into a flood. “So I just whisked away your clothes - they’re in the wardrobe now - but your sheets were so lovely and soft and it’s always just the right temperature in here - truly your thermostat is a wonder. Perhaps I could get one for the bookshop. It’s always either too warm or too cold, and that kind of variation can be really bad for the bo-”  
  
Aziraphale’s chatter started to irritate him into wakefulness. He interrupted “...so you just took my clothes off and -” Crowley gestured first at himself and then the bed.  
  
Aziraphale blustered, coloring. “I simply didn’t want you to be uncomfortable this morning. If that was… inappropriate… I will not do it again.”  
  
Crowley stayed, jaw and teeth and tongue seemingly disconnected from the parts of his brain responsible for speech, as Aziraphale fussed himself out of the room, stepping only once on Crowley’s ebony silk nest to reach the door.  
  
Dressed in clothing if not dignity, Crowley found the angel a few minutes later. He was rummaging through the pantry, making soft, disappointed humming noises.

*******************************

Later that morning, Aziraphale sat at his desk, hands folded in his lap, exhaling as he viewed the paper, already peppered with several crossed out terms of address and endearment.

  
<strike>Dearest,</strike>   
<strike> Dearly Beloved,</strike>   
<strike> Heart of My Heart,</strike>   
<strike> Dearest Heart of Mine,</strike>   
<strike> Song of my Heart,</strike>   
<strike> Dearheart,</strike>

He picked up his fountain pen, twirled it in his fingers, set it down again. He had his favorite pen, paper, and sepia ink, yet this was his fourth sheet of paper - no combination had provided the necessary alchemy.

  
Aziraphale had been trying not to tell Crowley how he feels for such a long time that telling him feels like adding milk before tea - wrong, though not morally so. Just personally wrong. Maybe it will be easier to write down, he had thought this morning while grumbling over the state of Crowley’s shelves. He hadn’t really minded, but having breakfast to prepare would give him something to do with his hands, and somewhere to look but at Crowley’s.

Over the radio - wood cut intricately around the speakers, a miraculous survivor of the Blitz - came music as modern as he could stand. His preferred station was playing Rachmanninoff today, who died around the time the world was exploding, and Aziraphale was on edge enough today without the reminder. The oldies station was not that old, he was sure of it, and

_I hope you don’t mind _   
_ if I put down in words_   
_ how wonderful life is_   
_ while you’re in the world_

came crooning out of the wooden grate.

_If only I could,_ sighed Aziraphale. _I could write just three words, or a thousand, and none of them will be enough for you._ Smiling, he rose to collect some of his favorite works from the shop. He hadn’t masqueraded as a research librarian for quite some time, but he knew down to Dewey’s last decimal that if you don’t have the words yourself, someone else has written them before.

Thumbing along a nearby pile of books, he pulled one out and opened to a bookmarked page to read lines neatly highlighted in palest blue.

_I wanted to run away with you tonight_   
_ but you are a difficult woman_   
_ the rules of you -_   
_ Past and future circle round us_   
_ now we know more now less_   
_ in the institute of shadows_

_ On a street black as widows_   
_ with nothing to confess_   
_ our distances found us_

_the rules of you - _   
_ so difficult a woman_   
_ I wanted to run away with you tonight._

Hmm, Carson. That might work. It gave him an idea for another author and he went hunting for the first edition, the one that caused so much trouble.

_When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise, _   
_ And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming,_   
_ then I was happy, O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,_   
_ And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,_   
_ And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,_   
_ I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,_   
_ For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,_   
_ In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,_   
_ And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy._

Oh, dear old Walt, Aziraphale thought. His life could have been so different today.

Aziraphale strode deeper into his stacks, seeking a way to tell Crowley how much he meant.

*********  
Crowley knows he shouldn’t expect Aziraphale to be available to him instantaneously. Probably shouldn’t worry so much either, but after agonizing over jams and brioche or brown bread and cage free or organic eggs, he returned home with an improbably large number of things. If he were honest, they were rather too many to casually imply that he just hadn’t bothered with the shopping over Armageddon. But he was a demon, and not even the hosts of hell could make him admit his desire to keep an angel nibbling toast all day tomorrow.   
  
And Aziraphale was apparently nowhere at all - not on the voicemail, not at his door, not a note, not a call, not a knock. Aziraphale wasn’t answering his phone but had seemed so clear that he’d be back “soon.” It could just be a book _please let it be a book,_ after all he has practically had to break down the door when Aziraphale gets overly involved in a novel. _Honestly would he even notice if the shop caught fi- no, best not think about that. _ He’d just pop out for a coffee, since he’d like to wait for a good long time before Aziraphale caught him dozing off on his shoulder again, and bring something along to the angel. Just a friend, checking in. Nothing odd about that.

****************  
The cafe nearest to Aziraphale was painfully hip, but they knew Aziraphale’s tea preferences by heart and had some quality locally roasted coffees. “Hey, Crow!” tossed out the barista from behind the counter, and Crowley for once did not object to the moniker, so preoccupied with Aziraphale. “What’s the tea?” He barely noticed, though after taking his order, another staff member rolled his eyes. “Oi! You’ve been at it all day with that joke.” The original barista just giggled to herself while collecting cups for the silk oolong and espresso she had already known Crowley would order.

****************

Pausing just inside the door to set down tea and coffee, bell jingling above, Crowley saw not the cozy dimness of the shop, but a shock-white flurry of pages - swirling in midair, strewn around the floor in drifts and heaps. Crowley had let himself in after finding the door unlocked with the closed sign up and no angel guarding the portal.

He hadn’t seen so much bright white since he borrowed his best friend’s skin to get into Heaven and both of them out of a scrape… but this wasn’t the unrelieved, shimmering white of heaven. The pages were covered in writing, and grabbing one that brushed sharp past his face, he examined it and saw page numbers. _Page numbers? Oh no. Not his books._ His back tensed in fear. This wasn’t Hell’s style - but was it Heaven’s? To destroy what you most loved? Had they finally realized that deadly sin of which their rogue Principality was most guilty? “Aziraphale?”

Not waiting for an answer, he pulled his elbows in front of his face to shield from the pages, moving faster as he rushed further into the improbable storm. Paper is soft on the surface, but edges and words both cut. “Aziraphale!” yelled Crowley, striding onward into the white-cream-grey-white storm, observing how much they looked like feathers, rising and falling. A few steps in, he found a quiet space in the middle - at its center a huddle of actual feathers, white and shaking.

Oh no... “Angel?” asked Crowley, just loud enough to be heard above the susurrus of whirling pages. “Angel, are you alright?” The pile of feathers simply shook. Crowley edged around the eye of the storm to where he was reasonably sure Aziraphale’s face would be, dropped loose-hipped into a crouch, and reached out to brush a wing, paused, and pulled his hand back to his pocket.

Whatever had happened, his dearest friend was clearly panicked and Crowley had no way of knowing if touch would be welcome. “Angel, darling, are you OK?” and nobody was there to hear if Crowley’s voice cracked saying “darling,” except Aziraphale, who merely shook, more distinctly now, the echo of a head shaking a message from within his fluffy cocoon.

“Angel, angel, I can’t see you shaking your head in there. Are you hurt? Please tell me. Did someone do this to your shop?” and Aziraphale’s breathing broke into a sob, shaking to the very tips of his primaries, which were dragging back and forth on the ground as he trembled. _Those will be all mussed after this,_ thought Crowley. He bit his lip, sank back onto his heels and noticed for the first time the books strewn around the floor, many with pages still intact. An omnibus by Christina Rossetti, a few volumes of Andrea Gibson, Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho, and a whole pile of Mary Oliver, with Blue Iris on top.

Crowley liked to say he didn’t read, but it was only to needle Aziraphale, and because he didn’t read as quickly as the angel, who appeared not to read at all, but to either drown in or devour books. If he was going to consume poetry himself, he’d rather it cried aloud, pulsing insistent, not sanitized into neat letters and tucked between soft-coated covers. Glancing around at the still-whirling pages, Crowley thought he had never seen Aziraphale try so hard to literally drown in pages before. Aziraphale didn’t seem hurt - there was no visible blood, his wings seemed merely disheveled, and Crowley had never seen him succumb to this level of panic in response to physical damage.

Maybe what had hurt him were only words, since there was a surfeit of them involved in this scene - and if they were, perhaps Aziraphale would come out of his cocoon if Crowley could only choose the right ones.

“Aziraphale, angel, I’m here. Please let me help you” made no impact, nor did “I think it’s safe now, would you let me in?” nor did “It’s just us, angel, I promise, only us,” and in fact he thought the papers started swirling faster at that last sally.

He thought about the last time he went to see a poetry reading, having told Aziraphale he had to go tempt some dykes in Brighton and swanned out of the shop. Crowley picked up a book with a cover emblazoned with butterflies winging out of a hole in someone’s chest and flipped through, started reading aloud.

_"You find me at the coffee shop,_   
_ at the movies, at the grocery store_   
_ buying comfort food._

_You find me on dates,_   
_ which is terrible because on dates_   
_ I really try to appear… dateable"_

As Crowley read, he glanced up to keep an eye on the shivering feathered form in front of him. He hadn’t opened up yet, but was he shaking a little less?

_"You found me on an airplane,_   
_ then in the arms of the medic_   
_ after the plane stopped on the runway_

_and turned around to let me off._  
_Don’t worry,_ the medic said,  
_It’s just a panic attack,_

_as if that would comfort me,_   
_to know I am the enemy,_   
_ my body -- its own stalker."_

If he wasn’t imagining it… no, it really did look like some space was forming in the center of the cocoon of wings, where a head of curls as soft and white as the feathers would hopefully appear. Crowley felt a small sad smile form and continued his recitation.

_"Today you found me mid-sentence_   
_ while buying tick repellent_   
_ at the hardware store._

_You chewed the hairs_   
_ on the back of my neck_   
_ until I couldn’t hear the words_

_panting out of my mouth_   
_ until I wasn’t even there_   
_ but was in another state"_

And there they were, soft curls emerging as the wings drooped a little, each curl still shaking along with the feathers, revealing hints that the human form inside them might be… rocking? _Oh angel, angel, whatever it is I’ll fix it, I promise, _thought Crowley.

___"Is it possible to be eaten alive  
while someone’s eyes__ _

_are asking, Are you OK?_  
Are you OK?  
_No, I’m not OK,_

_ ever." _

Crowley remembered sitting in the audience at Gibson’s performance, captivated by his mirror on stage - lanky, abrupt, animated by desire, wrath, an aggressive display of vulnerability.

_"I tell myself, You’re fine, _

_that’s just your heart_   
_ giving your sternum a high five_   
_ eighty times a second."_

Was that a laugh? No, not a laugh, but a raw sob of a chuckle and the wings lowered a fraction, revealing a glimpse of Aziraphale’s tear-streaked face, pinked and shining. Crowley searched what he could see for blood, or scratches, seeing none, then kept reading, smile spreading. They were getting to the good part.

_"I think our culture is beginning to get a tiny bit better_   
_ about depression. Often my tears don’t go cold_   
_ on my cheeks before someone is there,_

_but we treat panic, anxiety, terror_   
_ as the failings of uncourageous minds_   
_ who haven’t sipped enough chamomile tea_

_or haven’t tattooed Namaste_   
_ onto the right part of their windpipe_   
_ or haven’t picked enough lavender_

_from their herb gardens_   
_ to rub into their_   
_ pussy chakra."_

And finally - suddenly - Aziraphale’s sobs sounded more of laughter than tears and Crowley knew he wanted to spend the next 6000 years listening to it. Aziraphale’s wings slunk down beside him for a few breaths, then tucked in behind his back neatly as the seven buttons on his waistcoat. He sat kneeling and in between chuckles, he took a hiccuping breath and the paper storm blew over, pages settling into chaotic hillocks on the carpet and each other. Crowley noticed soft fingers shaking a bit, unable to settle, drumming on his knees, glancing to Crowley’s face with a half-attempt at a bracing smile and then away again, lip curling in under pearly teeth to nibble anxiously.

“I didn’t know you knew Andrea Gibson.”

“I don’t. Know her, I mean.” Crowley knew what Aziraphale meant but wanted solid ground back under his feet, and that looked like being able to deliberately annoy an angel into betraying his truer self.

“Oh, you know what I meant,” Aziraphale stammered, “I never thought you’d read her poetry. It’s terribly modern, and she’s not adhering to any rules of scansion I’ve ever met, but she’s so evo-”

“Aziraphale! I’m not here for a literary analysis. Are you alright? What happened?”

Aziraphale shrank into himself, just a little, and Crowley could have kicked himself for the impatience in his tone. “It’s nothing, really.”

Crowley just stared, openmouthed, and gestured with both arms taking in the shop “This? Is nothing?” and spinning his right hand in the air in a circle “That? Was nothing? Aziraphale, it’s OK if you don’t want to tell me but I was so worried. And your books…” Crowley took a steadying breath for the first time since he’d walked in the door “...I was - am - so worried.

“I just - I just - I just had to say - and I couldn’t, I can’t” Aziraphale’s breathing quickened and he stared terror struck into Crowley’s eyes, murmuring “I just needed…”

“Yes, angel, what did you need to say?”

And then with a moan and a swish, his angel’s soft form disappeared again from sight, concealed by wings, words replaced with sobs again, pages eddying up off of drifts, though only knee high this time, and slower.

“Aziraphale,” keened Crowley softly. He knew people saw Aziraphale’s softness, carried on the outside, in smiles and handshakes, blessings spilling from his lips. Crowley kept his own guarded, caged within angles, tucked away safely, stored under swagger-jacket and his skinny jeans, and right now it felt bruised. How many times will I sit on this floor begging for you to come back to me? he wondered. “Angel, please, please come out for me. I promise I will take care of you, if you let me.”

Papers stilled, then an arm shot out from between tucked-tight wings, pointing at the desk. “Angel, what? You want me to get you something from the desk?”

“No, the waste paper basket,” came the wing-muffled response.

“The bin. You want me to look in the bin?”

“YES, the bin,” snipped the sniffy angel.

“OK, OK” said Crowley, rising. He walked to the desk and reached in to find snowballs of cream white paper, the kind only old people use for paper resumes now, not for handwritten correspondence when email is so much faster. He selected the one on top and cradled it in his palms. “I should open this?” he asked, with a curious gesture back at the unseeing angel.

“Yes. No, I mean, yes. That’s probably best.”

Crowley’s forehead furrowed into a deep crease and he pinched his brows in between forefinger and thumb. “Angel. This is your own writing, presumably. I’m not going to read it if you don’t say for sure you want me to. Paper snowstorms or no paper snowstorms.” That won a snort, if not a chuckle. Crowley would take what he could get. “So?”

“Please, do read it. Only…”

“Only?” asked Crowley, using every inch of his self control not to sigh loud enough for Aziraphale to hear.

“Only please don’t judge me too harshly,” said Aziraphale, lowering his wings again, but firmly looking away and at the floor.

Crowley unwrapped the page he found on the top of the wastepaper basket. On the crinkled paper was a series of crossed out terms of endearment, followed by commas, as if the beginning of a love letter, then an excerpt from a cheesy Elton John song. A love letter barely started and a refrain from a… love… song.

His face burning, heat spreading slowly down his neck, Crowley turned towards Aziraphale, who had tucked his wings back into a neat folio, to reveal hands cradled in front of his eyes. Then two ethereal eyes peeked open on the back of his palms and Crowley swallowed a yelp of surprise. Wings and eyes in one day, he thought, what’s next?

All he said in reaction was “Oh,” and walked back to Aziraphale to kneel in front of him, holding the page out like an offering. “Is this for me?” Crowley still didn’t know how this related to a literary hurricane, but disliked extremely the idea that anything connected to him would cause this angel such distress.

Aziraphale nodded, eyes - all four of them, presumably - still closed.

“Angel, will you look at me? Please?”

Flushed, curls askew, pupils wide, Aziraphale looked right at him and Crowley felt himself turn what he knew must be a deep shade of maroon. “Can you tell me what happened? Was it just this letter? Does trying to say - does feeling - about me - upset you?” Crowley’s voice shifted higher as he spoke, so he took a breath and tried to pretend a calm he felt not at all.

“Oh no, no no,” cried Aziraphale, who started to reach for Crowley without thinking, then stopped. Crowley’s fingers itched to reach back. “I don’t, I mean I worry about them,” said Aziraphale with a glance upward, “even after everything, but I don’t feel badly about - I simply worry you’ll not share my, ah, sentiments?”

“Angel, pray, what sentiments are those? Have mercy on me. Is it - do you…” he couldn’t say it. Not even after this mad scene, not after facing down the end of the world, not for anything.

“...love you? Yes, of course I do, what do you think” he waved at the letter, “I was trying to say?”

“You love me.” Crowley spoke as if repeating words in some language he’d never learned.

“Yes.”

  
“You… love me?”

  
“Yes, dear boy, yes.”

  
“But what was - all this” Crowley gestured at the piles of paper around him “about?”

  
“Well, I wanted to tell you the right way.”

  
“...the right way…”

  
“So I tried to write you a love letter.”

  
Crowley felt as if someone had just handed him a watercolor set when he’d been expecting a sandwich, or offered him staplers when asked for shoes. He recalled the Cabaret Voltaire and the entirely off-balance sense of suffusing joy the Dadaists brought to life. His mouth was doing something funny, curved so tight he thought his cheeks might break. “You tried to write me a love letter.”

  
“Yes, that’s what I said!”

  
“OK, and then you made a paper tornado?”

  
Aziraphale had been calming down, but his blush rose again and he said “I guess I got a little caught up in my reading.”

  
Crowley raised an eyebrow nearly to his hairline.

  
“Well, I couldn’t find the right words to tell you how I felt, so I thought I could find them somewhere here. And I searched and searched. There are so many lovely verses, but none of them were right, were enough for you, and then I read one of them that was so touching, one of Mx Gibson’s and I read another about… death and I couldn’t stop re-reading it and… and it reminded me of when I discorporated and how afraid I was that... regardless I am terribly sorry to have scared you. It’s all been a bit… much, of late.”

  
“Oh, angel,” sighed Crowley, remembering his own fears at that time, believing this highly particular principality thoroughly lost to him. For a long moment, they just sat, kneeling in front of each other, knees only a handsbreadth apart. “Maybe we can read it together, sometime.” Crowley thought better of it for a moment, then added “or I could just burn it.”

  
“Crowley! You can’t go around burning books!”

  
“Mmmm. ..or miracle all the copies out of existence?”

  
“Crowley.” 

  
“Yes, angel?”

  
“Thank you.”

  
“Whatever for?”

  
“You’re so kind to me, even when...”

  
“...even when you’re distraught? Well, I certainly hope I am. I hear it is the done thing when you love someone.”

  
“You love me?” asked Aziraphale, and it would take someone with a more charitable heart than even Crowley’s to call the question anything other than a squeak.

  
“Obviously, angel, obviously I love you. How could I do anything but love you?”

  
“Crowley, please come here.”

  
“What?” Crowley shook his head. “Where?”

  
“Oh, honestly,” crooned Aziraphale, and, rising off his haunches, leaned towards Crowley precariously until he braced himself with a warm hand on Crowley’s thigh and, curling his hand on Crowley’s neck, pulled him close enough to kiss first his cheek, then the corner of his mouth, drawing a rough breath out of him. Crowley’s thoughts had fluttered away on his rapidly increasing heartbeats but he had enough sense to wrap his arm around Aziraphale and pull him closer, at which point Aziraphale promptly lost his balance and found himself half on Crowley’s lap.

  
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” murmured Crowley, lanky arms drawing him fully onto his lap and his angel’s tear-salted lips against his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Dearest gods, they are such tragic chaos queens and I love them so much. 
> 
> Works cited in this fic include, in order (I think):  
Your song, by Elton John  
Chelsea Morning, by Joni Mitchell  
Nighthawks, from Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson  
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman  
Ode to the Public Panic Attack, from Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson  
and a reference to Tincture, also from Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson
> 
> There are so many amazing writers in this fandom and I owe a profound debt to them and this creative primordial soup of a fandom for ideas. I can only hope I have not immersed myself so much in other people’s writing that I am trespassing unintentionally on other's ideas. 
> 
> If I sound overzealous here it is because I am. I can't help it, I am too excited and no good at pretending to be cool. After many many years as a voracious reader of stories and a writer of grants and case notes and research papers, I never imagined a tv show and a bunch of weird, wild, gentle people who I’ll probably never meet would get me reading and writing poetry and fiction again. It’s the very best kind of madness this world has on offer.
> 
> Also how do people write kissing? 90% of the agony in writing this was trying to write just one brief kiss. It made me wonder if I've ever really properly paid attention to kissing anyone in the last 20 years I've been kissing.


End file.
